All posts for the month June, 2017

I just read another portion of articles about achieving success in blogging, and my teacher mind has been trying to put all that information into a simple, clear and easy-to-remember system of rules. Many titles promise to reveal secrets of blogging success, but in fact, ther is nothing secret-ful about it: blogging is a skill – no more, no less sophisticated than any other skill that can be developed by thorough, repeating effort – and as so, there are no secrets behind it: only rules.

To be honest, I like setting up little rules for myself: they keep me well-organized and help me manage my time. Based on all the material that I have read about blogging, I have developed my own rules – or tasks, or… well, call them whatever you want, but certainly they are not secrets! Here they are:

1. Find a subject that works for you and your audience.

I find it quite logical to blog only about things that I know quite well and to share it with the people who are interested in the same topic(s). It goes without saying that I need to study the interests of my audience all the time if I want them to read the stuff I write.

2. Develop a voice and don’t lose it.

This is a very creative task, but developing an author voice is a skill, too. One does not have to be gifted for blog writing; good understanding of what you are doing plus lots of untiring effort would be enough. Sounds quite promising, eh? 😉

“Develop your author voice and keep it.”

3. Blog away regularly, let your articles be short and precise.

Doing something regularly is a good rule in every undertaking. When we talk about blogging, it is crucial, especially when you have regularly returning readers and fans. If you stop blogging for a while, a part of your audience may leave you, and regaining their respect later will be really hard.

“Краткость сестра таланта” (brevity is the soul of wit), said a brilliant Russian writer Anton Chehov in the19th century. Today, in the world of information, his words are gaining more and more value. People prefer short, schematic and visual posts… so I will stop here and go on to our next rule.

4. Communicate with your readers, and do it honestly.

I don’t think this item even needs any additional comments. Communication is the basis of the blogger’s life, it is the ultimate goal of blogging. Doing it with the most sincere intentions will help you to build that special bond with your readers, which makes you successfull and keeps your readers satifsied with your writing.

“Honestly? Alright, guys, I’ll be honest: I’m sleepy.”

5. Think like a scholar, share like a friend.

This is a good rule that just came to my mind this morning. By thinking like a scholar I mean being logical, consistent and precise in your writing. But sharing like a friend means that a blogger – no matter how educated and experienced she is – needs to find a lucid, intelligible style and friendly manner of writing.

6. In every blog post, tell your readers a story from life.

“I had never thought I would write a blog, until I met a fortune-teller who told me I would become a famous writer one day… This happened many years ago, the word “blog” did not exist then… but I could never get the prediction out of my head, and now… here I am, writing these words to you.” Did you get the idea of what I mean by suggesting to tell the readers a life story in every post? Let us go on then.

7. Illustrate everything!

Without the pictures of dogs this post would not attract even one tenth of the visitors to this site. Today, in the era of visual media, simple text is no longer attractive to anyone. All people have a common sympthom: a thirst for visual stimuli. So I have set this rule for myself: “every time you blog, do not forget to quench the thirst of your readers.”

This is it! Please, leave your suggestions and comments below. I would love to hear your feedback.

Let us face it: nearly everyone has an item like “learn Spanish” or “do Rosetta Stone class” on their bucket list once in a while. When it comes to learning a foreign language, thousands of people around the world start procrastinating and quite often, they stubbornly stick to a popular myth in order to justify their inaction. I am sure you have heard each of the below statements before. Today we will see if they are credible or not.

Myth 1: “It’s a hard work, I can’t do it.”

When I was a high school graduate, I decided it was time for me to learn some adult life skills, so I took a 6-week contract as a farmer’s apprentice during my summer break (it was in 1982, in the USSR). I remember weeding onions from dawn to sunset along with a dozen of women-farmers, who could do the same job five times faster than me and were a way better adapted to doing it in the mid-summer heat. By the end of the very first day my back was aching like crazy and my hands were cut all over by the taut and elastic stems of weeds. That was a kind of job which I call a hard work.

Learning a foreign language is quite opposite to that. In fact, I wouldn’t call it a work at all. You only need to listen, read, watch and react to the obtained information. Because you don’t know many foreign words, your first reactions are simple: whenever you can understand a phrase, you try to respond with the help of hand movements, mimics, exclamations, gesturing, a bit of acting, etc. This simple activity is already the language learning, because when we communicate, this is exactly what we do: we send and receive portions of meaning to each other. This does not sound like a very hard work… and it isn’t.

Myth 2: “Learning is boring, it always is.”

The process of learning a foreign language can be boring only to those who-

a) like being bored; or

b) are not motivated for learning,

but if you are well-motivated, you will love it!

To make it easy and captivating, start by setting a very simple goal: to exchange any meaningful units of information with other people. Take a dozen of simple words (for example, take the words: I, you, like, need, work, have, this, room, book, class) and practice putting them together into various combinations. Again, be sure to help yourself with mimics, gestures and any other internationally recognized patterns of non-verbal communication. Then, take another dozen of words, and another. After an hour of such practice you will see that you have learned nearly a hundred of words and – most importantly – you can put them together into simple sentences, which means that you can communicate! Was this boring? I don’t think so!

Every learning process stops being boring when you start doing it right, because it begins sending you signals that you are on the right way. Nothing can motivate a learner better than these little signs of success.

Myth 3: “One must have a talent for languages, I don’t have any”

You will have to believe me on this: you are already talented enough. As a language teacher with 25+ years of experience, I can certify: you do NOT need to have any special gift to learn a foreign language.

You have somehow mastered your native language, haven’t you? This means that your brain is completely developed and prepared to learn more of the language material, no matter if this is your native language or a foreign one.

All people living on our planet have similar anatomy: one head, two hemispheres of the brain to process information, a tongue to be able to speak, a pair of ears for listening and a pair of eyes for watching your partner in dialogue. This fact makes us equal when it comes to learning anything new. In the beginning, you won’t even need to think or torture your brain by remembering stuff: just listen to others, repeat what they say, and copy their intonation… like all toddlers do when they try to communicate.

Learning a foreign language has very much in common with learning your first, native language: if you were smart enough to master that first one, then you are good enough to master another language.

Myth 4: “To master a foreign language, I need a classroom.”

There are hundreds of life examples, which can break this myth within minutes. Quite often, people learn a new language without any classroom or coursebooks, simply by immersion in the so-called “language environment”. Our brain is a very flexible organ: it remains adaptable for study from early childhood to very old age; it can learn pretty well without coursebooks or grammar exercises. As soon as your brain receives an “imprint” of a new piece of information (for example, a new phrase which you hear someone say in a street), it imediately “sticks” the imprint to its meaning and puts this new element into a certain “memory cell”. No effort on your part is needed for this. Some classroom study can be helpful to those who need to be organized. Every language learning classroom aims to imitate real life situations to those who are separated from the language environment, but if you are lucky to have this environment around you every day, you can start speaking the new language much sooner than any classroom student.

In fact, our brain never stops to learn: you only need to open your mind, welcome the new knowledge and let it in, within the classroom or out of it.

Myth 5: “It is necessary to live in the country of the language.”

No, this isn’t a necessity at all. As we just mentioned above, your learning process can go much faster if you live in the country of the language for a while, this is true, but living within the language environment is not a necessary condition for the language study.

Today, we are all lucky to live in the informational society. We have instant access to a whole virtual universe, called the Internet, at a single click of a finger. Why not use it as a medium for learning a foreign language?

You can use the Internet resources for reading, social networks for communication practice, video files for better memorizing, and occasional online sessions with a teacher to get your knowledge organized. Learning foreign languages becomes easier and easier every day now, so don’t waste your time deciding, just start it right away!

Myth 6: “Language learning requires lots of time, I don’t have it.”

The good news is: you don’t have to do hundreds of exercises or drill the rules of the new language for hours; it is enough to give it a few minutes a day, but regularly. Try to fill some gaps in your day-plan with listening practice, simple reading, or doing fun language exercises (a lot of which you can find on numerous Internet sites designed specifically for the language learners like you). Why not take a look into a mobile application while you are waiting for your car to be filled at the station? Or listen a passage or two of a simple story while jogging? Or find a random language lesson on Youtube when doing some housework? If you start with 10-15 minutes a day and turn it into a habit, you will soon enjoy the first results.

In the end, we always learn by ourselves, which means that no one but you are the master of your time and knowledge. If you can organize your time well enough, you will always find a few minutes for the language study. Those who feel that they need someone’s organizing hand, can find a teacher and take a few online classes to get the general idea of the most effective ways to organize your learning process.

Myth 7: “I am too old for this; I will never learn.”

Growing older does not mean becoming incapable of learning new things. While there are some studies suggesting that children have an easier time learning a second language, no studies suggest there’s an age at which learning abilities disappear for good. So, let us put this myth to rest, too, and hink about another incentive instead: your age gives you some certain advantage in the form of life experience. You have been speaking your native language for quite some time, so your innate knowledge of its grammar and sounds will be helpful when trying to learn a new language from scratch.

Finally, let me tell you that I have been learning English for nearly half a century now, and of course, my English will never be perfect, because I have lived my life in the environment of anoher language, but this does not bother me much, because noone’s language is perfect! It really does not matter, how good, or fluent, or literate you are in a foreign language. The most important thing is to learn how to express your thoughts in it: the task which cannot be boring.

Historically, the term lingua franca was used to identify a bridge language, representing a mixture of Italian with French, Greek, Arabic, and Spanish, formerly used in the eastern Mediterranean. Today, the term has acquired a much wider meaning: lingua franca is a common language used as a means of global communication. We, people, have always needed it, but today, when the world’s population grows incredibly quickly along with the boosting development of communication technologies, the need for a language of global interaction has become crucial for our survival… and interestingly, it appeared by itself, without waiting for our global negotiation, memorandum signing, or approval. People have chosen English to be their “universal” language, and today this fact is accepted by everybody.

Currently, more than 350 millions of lucky guys around the world speak English as their native language, plus 430 million people are using it as the second language, and it is not difficult to find English speakers practically in all corners of the world. More and more frequently now, English is called the international language of business, science, politics, trade, academic world, journalism, travel, Internet, global press, and its influence continues to increase right at the moment, while I am writing these words.

(These figures are of the year 2014)

But why is it English? It is not the most spoken language in the world. What makes it our lingua franca today?

Though the number of its speakers soars up with acceleration, it is native to 350 million, while there are 500 million of Spanish speakers, nearly 500 million of Hindustani (Hindi/Urdu) natives and 900 million of Mandarin Chinese speakers in the world. The main explanation of the reason why English has gained the status of the world’s lingua franca lies in its linguistic specificity. English is widely considered as a “simple” language which is relatively easy to pick up. It has no noun genders, no complicated morphology, no tone system, it is written in the Roman alphabet which is pretty good at accurately mapping sounds to symbols, and majority of the English learners agree that, due to its mathematically logical structure, it is relatively easy to build understandable phrases in it. Besides this, the prevalence of English-language movies, television programs, and Internet sites makes the language quite accessible to practice.

At the same time, English has an extensive vocabulary and a highly inconsistent spelling system, which can turn one’s learning process into nightmare. It also has hundreds of irregular verbs, some problematic sounds such as “th”, and a large inventory of vowels which can make it difficult for a foreigner to understand the native speakers of English. Still, representatives of many nations would rather prefer to take time and learn English rather than take up Mandarin, Hindustan, or Arabic, for example.

There is one more explanation of the role of English: a historical one. Generations ago, the United Kingdom became the first industrialized nation; the boosting development of technologies started from there and since then, the English speaking nations have pioneered in technologies and science. They managed to colonize the rest of the developing world far faster than other European countries. At some point, the British Empire covered a quarter of the globe at its largest, including North America, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, much of West and Southern Africa, South Asia, and parts of South-East Asia. The UK set up English-speaking systems of government, industry, trade and business, which established English as the language of global power in the industrial era. In the 20th century we could see the transfer of power from one English-speaking expansionist to another: the USA’s cultural, economic, political, and military domination has also encouraged the process of global recognition of English as the most important and influential global language. Today, when the world has entered the informational stage of evolution, English has officially become the language of IT, meaning that its status of the global lingua franca has been reconfirmed, and it is unlikely to change any time soon.

Russians love asking and answering questions. In fact, quite often, our communication process keeps going mainly by means of aking each other short questions and jumping from one topic to another just for the sake of the speech process itself. When meeting, Russian close friends seldom greet each other by traditional “здравствуй” (Hello) or “Доброе утро” (good morning), they rather start with questions right away: “Ну что? Как дела?” (So? How are things?), “Что нового?” (What’s new?), “чем занимаешься?” (What’s keeping you busy?), “Что скажешь?” (What will you tell me?) “как оно?” (How’s it going?)… I could continue this list on and on. All these phrases are cliches: we use them so often that we pronounce them automatically, and quite often a newcomer may not recognize them by an unprepared ear. This is why, I listed the main Russian question words below in this article and supplied them with simple transliteration notes for your convenience.

I think I should share one more little secret here: unlike the English-speakers, when Russians ask something, they expect a full, detailed unswer. The talk may move from one topic to another and return back a number of times; Russian love to interrupt each other by telling stories that just came to their mind in association with the object of discussion, and usually they cannot wait to tell their stories.

People who ask too many questions are friendly called Почемучка (A-why-so-man or woman); those who seem to know answers to all questions are called Знайка (All-knowing guy).

The good news is the face that many questions in Russian language can be made by simply changing intomation of your sentence. For example, the phtase “Ты можешь мне позвонить” (You can call me) can be considered an affirmative sentence when pronounced with ordinary intonation, and the same phrase can turn into a question “Ты можешь мне позвонить?” (Can you call me?) simply by changing the intonation.

Still, there are a number of question words which, like in every other language, serve to ask for details of some events or actions. Here are these question words, and below, a couple of tables explaining how these words can/should be changed depending on the case, gender, or other grammar specificities.

The main question words in Russian:

Что? [shto] – What? Кто? [hto] – Who? Как? [kak] – How?

Сколько? [skolka] or [skoka] – How many?

Почему? [pachimU] – Why?

Когда? [kagdA] or [kadA] – When?

Где? [kde] – Where? (Used when you are searching for something. “Where is the bank?”)

Notes: Where gender is shown, the word should agree with the noun it relates to.
The word Какой declines like a stressed adjective, so it must also agree in case.
The words Что? and Кто? have different forms in different cases. Above is nominative. (others shown below)

This is a similar table, but is provides examples of related words and prepositions which are traditionally used with thes words when we answer case forms of questions Кто? [hto] – Who? and Что? [shto] – What?

I hope this information with help you a little bit. Don not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions!

A couple of days ago I suddenly started getting signs of being in luck. Well, unlike many others, I am not superstitious; I mean, finding a thing like a four leaf clover would hardly make me excited. Still, I could not help noticing signs of good fortune, they poured onto me intensely and bluntly, like a powerful stream that rolls down a hill, smashing obstacles on its way.

It began with a bus ticket, a so-called lucky one. While the bus was carrying me to my destination, a few scenes from my middle school years kept floating in my mind. If the sum of the first three digits on your ticket equals the sum of the last three digits, this ticket will certainly bring you good luck, my school friends used to say. If you get a lucky ticket, you should eat it at once… I was summing up little figures printed on the gray scrap of paper when my bus nearly hit a huge truck, making me forget about that ticket at once, of course.

I did not take a picture of my lucky ticket, but here is one I found on the Internet as an illustration

Later during the day, a bird pooped on my shoulder – a small bird like a tit or a sparrow – it flew away before I could see it, but the fact remains that it spoiled my blouse! Knowing that all of my friends would blindly believe in the good outcome of such accident, I had a good reason to grin, “What a nonsense! Never heard of a more stupid omen than this!” I ignored that omen, too, because at that very moment I found a long awaited letter in my mailbox: it said that my book had been published!

This guy does not look quite happy being pooped at! 🙂

Soon, a new “sign of fotrune” arrived as a proof that it was not the end of my journey of luck: I broke my favorite plate by dropping a glass that fell right on it and shattered into small pieces, too. In every Russian home this would be considered a sign of double luck, but, well, not to me. I was growing tired of my little mishaps, so I spit three times over my shoulder and knocked three times on a wooden table – the surest Russian way of keeping lucky till the end of the day.

And then my hand started itching: a sign of an imminent inflow of earnings, welcomed by every Russian, of course! “Not my style,there’s no logic in this,” I thought to myself as I rushed to pick up my buzzing phone: it was a colleague calling to say that our boss had increased my salary by fifty percent! She sounded so excited that I did not recognize her voice at first… another Russian belief, by the way. She screamed into my ear, “You see? This is it! You did not recognize me, and so I am also in luck! I just got a confirmation message about my raise, too!”

I hang up and returned to the kitchen to feed my cat. He was washing his face, and a casual thought slipped through my mind: this means I am going to have a guest in my home.

No, this was too much for one day! I was fed up with those signs, as I was fed up resisting my “fate”. I did not want any more of this stuff in my life, but my mind still kept pestering me by intrusive guesses:

What if I show a coin to the young Moon, which is this night, by the way? Will I become any richer?

If I hit my elbow on a doorway, will my boyfriend finally dare to tell me he loves me?

Is it true that this pigeon looking through my window is going to bring me a romantic adventure?

A horseshoe and clover are considered to be signs of good luck, internationally

I felt tired and went to bed early that day. I began to believe that there might be some subtle dependence between all those popular omens and real events… at least, they had been forming for ages! “If you believe in something, it will come true,” our ancestors used to say. Who knows? They could be perfectly right, I thought. The pace of my thoughts slowed down and I slept… and I saw a ring in my dream.

Something made me wake up. As I lay there thinking that the ring, by the way, was also a silly omen promising me a whirlwind romance over the night, the sound of the door bell cut into the quietness of my home.

Oh goodness, I thought, who can it be?

“He stood in the doorway – my boyfriend – all wet from the showering rain.”

He stood in the doorway – my boyfriend – all wet from the showering rain. A few drops reached my face as I touched the rose he was holding between us. Fresh fragrance of the flower made me wake up from my drowsy oblivion, so I opened my mouth to greet him, but he interrupted me by a passionate kiss.

Then he said, “Please, let me in. I happened to have a terrible day: I broke a large mirror, I stupidly walked under a ladder, then a black cat crossed my way… twice, and a friend started whistling right in my home… so many bad luck signs just in one day that I nearly started to believe in this nonsense!” He took my hands in his and looked right into my eyes. “Darling, let me stay here with you tonight. You are my only good luck charm, and let me be yours. It is so much easier to resist evil omens, when love keeps us both, don’t you think?”

I excitedly clutched the stem and a thorn dug deep into my finger (meaning I would marry the guy who gave me the rose). I gasped, then I shook my head.

“This isn’t even an omen,” I said, looking into his eyes and moving my face closer. “Even before this moment I kind of believed that we are about to marry this year.”

The English-speaking learners of Russian often complain about having hard time memorizing Russian words, which seem too long and difficult to pronounce. In this post we will look at some ways to simplify the process of memorizing Russian words.

First of all, let us agree that memorizing is a learning skill, which requires time and concentration of the learner’s attention, which means that the words cannot “jump” into our memory without our participation. So, the first condition of good memorizing is your intellectual and emotional state. Do not even try to memorize anything when your mind is busy thinking over some work problem or when you are excited or disturbed by something. Also, a very important thing is motivation. If you know exactly why you are learning Russian and how you may use knowledge of these particular words in the future, then you will memorize everything quickly and, as some students often put it, “almost without effort.”

To make your memorizing process as efficient as it can be, you may want to start a book (or a file) of new words, then you can enter every new word you come across, and thus, you can see your progress, daily. Some people, however, are not big fans of writing, they memorize everything “by ear” or “by their eyes”, so let us leave this choice to every person, individually.

The first thing you meed to do to remember a new Russian word is to look at it with full attention, and read it loud, trying to hear your own voice as you pronounce it and remember how the word is spelled with your eyes.

Let us take the word неожиданность, for example. It is long and difficult to read for a beginner. First, you need to know the basic information about the word: it is a feminine, singular noun, it has 5 vowels, which means it has 5 syllables (не–о-жИ-дан-ность), it has a stress on the 3-rd syllable (letter и is stressed) and it is used in its dictionary form (has no specific ending). All this information is usually available in dictionaries.

Now, for the pronounciation. Try to read it loud: неожиданность [ni-a-zhi-dan-nast’]. Repeat the word a couple of times and get your tongue accustomed to saying it.

So far so good, you will say, but what does it mean? The unpleasant thing is the fact that this word does not have a direct, completely equivalent translation into English, “неожиданность” means: an unexpected event, a surprise, something that happened unexpectedly. All right, you can probably remember the meaning of the word, but how can you remember this incredible sequence of letters?!

Here is a way: look at its syllables first-

неожиданность – [ni-a-zhi-dan-nast’] – and interpret it as: [new-a-zhid-an-nast] or even as: [new-as-shit-on-us]. I am sure this way the word is crooked all over, but it is beginning to create a trace in your mind.

The fact is, when you try to build up a meaningful association between a new piece of language [ni-a-zhi-dan-nast’] and something already familiar [new-as-shit-on-us] – no matter how crazy it may sound, our memory “catches” the new meaning right away, creates a visual association (I am sure your brain has already built an image in association with the [new-as-shit-on-us] combination), and then memorizing takes place. The only thing you need to know now is to make a mental note for yourself that Russian word неожиданность means something new happening unexpectedly, that is is a noun and sounds somewhat similar to the phrase [new-as-shit-on-us]: ni-a-zhi-dan-nast’.

The next step will be to train using this word in other word combinations (preferably, in the most commonly used combinations – just as it appears in its language:

There are many other methods of memorizing language material, and we are going to look at more of them in our future posts, but most of those methods aim to achieve the same effect: to develop an image in your mind, which will “stick” to the meaning and to your way of “hearing” the new word. Try the above method for now – play with your words, try to develop associations with their meanings or the ways they sound and memorizing will become a lot easier.

As the last little tip I’d like to suggest you not to waste your time trying to memorize difficult words. If a word seems quite difficult, just skip it for now and go on to work with the next one; try to choose the easiest and the most “likeable” words in the first place. Try the ones which you can easily pronounce and associate with something familiar. This will save you the time and emotion of having to remember the “immemorizeable” stuff.

Did you understand what I meant by “immemorizeable”, by the way? Right, I meant to say: something that cannot be memorized. Your mind just did the job of understanding of this word (which does not exist in the English language, but is understandable to you because of its quite understandable parts). When you try to memorize Russian words, your brain pushes every new word through a similar process. This is why, if you learn to divide the “meaningless” Russian words into meaningful units of sounds, you can easily use your existing mind strategies for memorizing of the new words.

Millions of people around the world today are ready to travel across continents in order to see original Van Gogh’s paintings. I am a happy one of them: I have done this more than once. Luckily, Van Gogh became appreciated quite soon after his death, so most of his works have been found, restored, and are kept with proper care.

I have been looking through Van Gogh’s paintings, and decided to share a few lines about this amazing man. I believe, these facts about Van Gogh’s life will be new and interesting to you-

His life began with a strange decision made by his parents: they gave him the same name as they had given to their previous child. It appears that Vincent had an older brother who died at birth. His name was also Vincent.

Then, according to a common tradition, Van Gogh was supposed to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a pastor. Luckily, he was strong enough to choose his own way in life. Here is a photo of young Vincent.

Van Gogh did not start drawing in early childhood, like many famous artists did. He was 27 years old when he painted his first piece. Before that, he had been failing as an art dealer and engaging in missionary work. He was mostly self-taught and he started out by painting dark and sad depictions of peasants. Only later he started drawing light and life-welcoming pictures, like First Steps, after Millet (1890, oil on canvas, 72.4 x 91.1 cm)

In late 1885, interested in honing his skills as a figure painter, Van Gogh left the Netherlands to study at the Antwerp Academy in Belgium. Three months later, he departed for Paris, where he lived with his brother Theo, an art dealer with the firm of Boussod, Valadon et Cie, and for a time attended classes at Fernand Cormon’s studio. Van Gogh’s style underwent a major transformation during his two-year stay in Paris (February 1886–February 1888). There he saw the work of the Impressionists first-hand and also witnessed the latest innovations by the Neo-Impressionists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. His Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat is a good illustration of the Impressionists’ influence on his work.

Between 1886 and 1889 he painted over 30 self-portraits. Was he trying to understand himself this way or was his own face just the handiest object to draw? We will never know.

In May 1889, fearing a new breakdown, Van Gogh voluntarily entered the asylum at Saint-Rémy, where, over the course of the next year, he painted some 150 canvases.

He painted Portrait of Dr. Gachet in 1890. In May 1990, the portrait was sold for $148.6 million dollars. As funny as it may sound, neither the artist, nor Dr.Gachet could ever imagine such a pile of money.

As unbelievable as it may sound, Facebook has become a significant part of daily life for nearly 1.4 billion (!) people worldwide. The aility to instantly address and receive feedback from such a mind-blowing number of users makes Facebook (as well as other social networks) a powerful research tool that has been largely overlooked. The informaiton available on social networks might be invaluable not only for social sciences, but for any other field of knowledge, because it could help to address a major challenge faced by the scientists today: they have to rely on samples that are relatively small and thus, are insufficient to make statistically significant conclusions. With billions of users turning up online daily and willingly sharing their opinions, experiences, observations or concerns, Facebook becomes an unprecedented storage of research information for scientists.

During the latest decade, social networks have grown into miniature versions of the real world’s community of people, they bear all major characteristics of the human society, so a network like Facebook can be regarded and studied as a dynamic model of the world community that reflects modern tendencies of human interaction and communication!

I have seen many articles reviewing the opportunities and challenges of Facebook research: some of them provide practical recommendations for conducting research within social networks, others discuss ethical considerations of such study, some focus on ways of collecting self-reports on Facebook, but I have not seen any attempts to see our dear FB as a new, 21-st century-born, worldwide communication model.

Today, in 2017, all the world’s books, dictionaries, maps, and other printed materials are being rapidly replaced by electronic informational resources, especially by those which offer information in condensed, digest-type blocks of pictures, video snippets or visual schemes rather than text or any materials that require reading. People are forgetting how to write, they are growing lazy enough to type and it seems that even traditional reading is beginning to irritate many. (I have deliberately colored these lines to attract your attention to them – please, send me your comments if you think I am not getting it right).

I could fantasize more about possible changes of life in the far future, but, to be honest, the problems of tomorrow concern me more. The boosting development of Facebook (read: social-networks-based) communication has opened a new era of human interaction, where everybody communicates to everybody at the same time, and neither time nor space matters anymore. If in the previous centuries we needed to overcome distances and time to convey information to masses of people, today it is sent all over the world by a single click of your mouse. Information can literally travel at the speed of thought today!

I can drop a line on my Facebook page and in no time thousands of people will see what I have just thought. Likewise, I can get to know what they think within seconds, too, no matter how much distance lies between us. I can teach online and learn from my students; I can read someone’s book and connect with the author for feedback within seconds, I can share my opinions with the whole world and – what is really new and unusual – time and distance are no longer regarded as participating factors of the communication process.

Does this mean that our future communication is going to experience major changes? Will our children be able to write and read or will there be a new way of conveying information? I can imagine a world where they won’t need those skills… Are we going to develop a new – much faster and more convenient way of communicating information than exchanging words by means of reading and writing? Today, our technologies are developing so quickly that our minds are not ready to digest all information that comes. This means that the rapid change of living environment may cause unprecedented psychological reactions, because people are not machines… therefore, there is a large potential for social scientists and psychologists to study these new and quickly developing phenomena.

So, dear colleagues, what’s next? How can we predict our future, based on what we are observing today? Let us think about it and exchang our thoughts. I am certainly going to study this question and return to this topic again soon.

According to Razumkov Center’s sociological study, 55% of grown up Ukrainians have never been abroad, 16.3% go abroad less often than once in 10 years, 11.6% of the population visit other countries once in 6-9 years, 8.6% travel once in 2-5 years, and only 8.7% go abroad once a year or more often. Today, when the doors of the European Union are finaly open, Ukrainians do not need visas to enter the countries of the so-called Shengen zone.

In a few days now, 40 million Ukrainians with biometric passports will be permitted to enter 30 states in the Schengen zone for 90 days for tourism or business. After many months of ongoing discussions and negotiations, the decision has eventually been made and will come into force on June 11, 2017. The map below shows Ukraine in red, and the visa free territories in bright green, as well as the light-green territories where visa is issued upon arrival, and the grey territories are the countries which require a visa to be issued prior to the arrival into the country. Well, the good news is:

THE WORLD IS BECOMING GREENER FOR UKRAINIANS!

Our local press is full of articles about what to expect on a visit to Europe and how one should prepare for the trip. This fuss causes me mixed emotions, though. I am happy for the Ukrainians, of course. At the same time, this decision was preceeded with such a long period of procrastinating that it no longer excites anyone.

Still, I believe that every Ukrainian citizen – especially the young ones – MUST visit as many countries as it is possible, because-

THE ONES WHO TRAVEL A LOT CAN UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN COUNTRY BETTER

The more Ukrainians travel, the sooner they can make their life better. Today, thousands of people still scold their country and always grumble: “Everything is bad, it just can not be worse!” I am sure these are the voices of those who have never traveled abroad.

If more people travel and finally see the world with their own eyes, this will open their eyes, I a, sure. There are so many things one can do in this country, and there are really many things which are really very good here. One simply needs to have a wider look on things to be able to see this. Today, Ukraine is becoming the country of opportunity for many. I hope that Ukrainians will soon show this to the rest of the world.

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita was written in the 1930-es, but remained unpublished until 1967. The author died in 1940, unaware that his book would be read by hundreds of millions, translated into all world’s languages, and named one of the best novels of the 20-th century. Bulgakov started writing it in 1928, but burned the first manuscript in 1930, seeing no future as a writer in the Soviet Union, and then restarted the novel again in 1931. His personal drama was reflected in the book, along with numerous other dramatic and comical topics, drawn so brilliantly that, once having started reading, you cannot take a break and read it to the end.

The book is full of strikingly wise and amazingly precise thoughts. Below are a few phrases which I tried to translate from Russian with minimal loss of meaning, along with a few well-known illustrations of the book.

“What would your good do if evil didn’t exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?”

“Fact is the most stubborn thing in the world.”

“There is no greater misfortune in the world than the loss of reason.”

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At the crack of dawn, when the park was slowly waking up after a long frosty night, Pavel was already sitting in his usual place under a large chestnut tree... (read more here: https://www.onepersonstrash.org/fiction)